The Mighty Angels of Revelation 9

MP3: The Mighty Angels of Revelation 9

Hosts: Nathan Jones & Vic Batista

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The Fifth Trumpet Judgment Angel and the Star Angel

Vic Batista: By the time we get to Revelation 9 and the Fifth Trumpet Judgment Angel, it’s almost as if the entire world has been turned upside down. We’ve read about all these horrible catastrophes destroying the very things that people depend on like food and water. The weather cycle of the earth is going to be changed, as we read about in Revelation 7, with the four angelic beings holding back the four winds of the earth.

Now we get into Revelation 9 and the letting loose of some pretty horrific, fallen, demonic angels coming on the scene.

Nathan Jones: Yes, we have a complete shift in focus concerning the angels. So far we have been reading about the angels who have served the Lord. When Satan lead his rebellion, two-thirds of the angels stayed loyal to God, but a third of them rebelled. Now we are shifting from the angels serving the Lord and who are bringing the judgments of God on mankind to those demons who will actually become the judgments.

God releases the demonic realm in order to pass His judgments on mankind. So, even though the demons are against God, as they are fighting Him, and they live to try and stop God, they now end up unwittingly serving Him. In reality, demons are on a very short leash because they cannot do anything unless God allows them.

So, here we go. The Fifth Trumpet Judgment has God releasing a demonic army from their captivity. Revelation 9:1-6 reads:

“Then the fifth angel sounded: And I saw a star fallen from heaven to the earth. To him was given the key to the bottomless pit. And he opened the bottomless pit, and smoke arose out of the pit like the smoke of a great furnace. So the sun and the air were darkened because of the smoke of the pit. Then out of the smoke locusts came upon the earth. And to them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power. They were commanded not to harm the grass of the earth, or any green thing, or any tree, but only those men who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads. And they were not given authority to kill them, but to torment them for five months. Their torment was like the torment of a scorpion when it strikes a man. In those days men will seek death and will not find it; they will desire to die, and death will flee from them.”

Vic Batista: That passage alone would encompass a whole movie!

Nathan Jones: It could become a whole movie. So, we’ve got this star that falls to the earth, but verse one also gives the star the term “him,” a pronoun, and this star is given a key. We are not talking about a real star, rather we are talking about an angel. Likely God, who is sending this star angel down, is actually sending the Fifth Trumpet Judgment Angel, but it could be yet another angel, as the passage doesn’t specify.

The Star Angel is given the key to the Bottomless Pit. This is the bottomless pit we’ll read about later in Revelation where Satan will one day be cast. It is also a pit that divides Hades, which is the afterlife. The side where people who died in their rebellion against God reside in the side called Torments. Those people who have rejected Jesus Christ, that’s where they go now after they die. The other side is where Paradise used to be, and that’s where the Old Testament Saints resided before Jesus died on the cross. After Jesus died and became the final sacrifice, He took the Old Testament Saints up to Heaven. The Bottomless Pit is the great cavern which separates the two realm of Torments and Paradise.

The Scorpion Locust Demons

Nathan Jones: Currently residing in the Bottomless Pit is the demonic army God has stored there for this very time of judgment. We don’t know why the demons are not roaming the earth like many demons are right now. Maybe these demons are the worst of the worst?

These demons appear like a swarm of scorpion/locust creatures. As we’ve read earlier in Revelation, many angels have different shapes and sizes. They aren’t all blond, curly haired guys in white robes. They’re not all beautiful, white angels with feathery wings. No, angels come in all sorts of sizes and shapes. Some are acts of nature, and some are like animals, and some look like men.

Here we’ve got this great horde of locust-looking demons pouring up out of the earth and they are given power. And what are they given power to do? They are given power to torment mankind.

As we’ve been reading through the judgments of Revelation, the judgments have affected both believers and unbelievers alike. The reason for this is that while you are on the earth and the earth becomes damaged, then that affects everybody. These Tribulation residents are the people who were left behind after the Rapture of the Church. Sure, they’ve finally accepted Jesus and are saved, but they now have to live through the horrors of Tribulation.

That is, until we get to the Fifth Trumpet Judgment. This judgment is so bad that God puts His seal on believers’ foreheads. I’d imagine that only the angels can see this seal, but there is indeed a seal placed on the foreheads of God’s people. With this seal they are protected from any type of torment these demonic scorpion locusts dole out.

Vic Batista: This crazy scene reminds me of all sorts of pictures I’ve seen out there on the Internet. This story could be almost like out of a movie, and yet the Bible tells us this will really happen. Maybe this is where Hollywood gets the movie zombies?

Nathan Jones: I laugh, but you could be right. With all the stung people staggering around wishing they could die, it could be construed as a zombie apocalypse in a way.

To think that these are demons who are so terrible that they’ve actual been stored in a pit. They haven’t been inflicting mankind likely since around the Creation and Fall. Maybe they were on the earth before the Flood and the Lord got rid of them then? We aren’t told, but at some point in time these demons were sealed in this pit, but now God gives this Star Angel a key to open the pit up. Smoke pours out of this pit and these locust-like demons pour out to afflict mankind.

The duration of the Fifth Trumpet Judgment lasts only five months. Those not saved are stung by a stinger that looks like a scorpion or these demons are actually scorpion-like in appearance. The sting doesn’t kill a man, but it makes it so that they wish they could die, yet they cannot die. It is speculated from “In those days men will seek death and will not find it; they will desire to die, and death will flee from them” that during these five months it could be that nobody dies. Imagine that?

Vic Batista: Absolutely mind-boggling! The Bible in Revelation 9 seems pretty adamant that death takes a vacation during these five months.

Nathan Jones: That is one way to look at it. Maybe the believers in Christ who are all protected will continue to die naturally, though not from receiving any stings.

Think about how in the narrative we are almost 3.5 years into the Tribulation so far. We are nearly up to the middle of the Tribulation. So many people have been dying. Half of the world’s population has died gruesomely by this point. And then, all of a sudden, for five whole months nobody dies, though they all wish they were dead.

Vic Batista: That is why we believe that death for a Christian is actually a promotion. When those who have trusted in Jesus as Savior have our spirit released, what a beautiful thing that is! Now imagine having to live all mangled through this judgment but cannot die. If this tormented existence wasn’t bad enough, once those stung are finally cured and can actually die, because they haven’t trusted in God their whole eternity is going to be a torment and suffering in Hades and finally the Lake of Fire.

Nathan Jones: By this point during the Tribulation, everybody on earth knows that there is a God. They can either choose Him or choose the one-world leader called the Antichrist and his master, Satan. It is not that nobody knows or nobody understands, for they will all know about Jesus. They know from the preaching of the Two Witnesses in Jerusalem, and there are the 144,000 Jewish evangelists, and there will be a Gospel Angel spreading the Good News of Jesus Christ throughout the planet. There are also the judgments of God to point them to Christ. There is all the biblical material that Christians will have left behind to help people come to know the Lord. The Bible even tells the people what is coming ahead for them. So, mankind continues to remain without an excuse.

The Fifth Trumpet Judgment explains what these demonic scorpion locusts look like, and what they look like is crazy! Revelation 9:7-10 describes:

“The shape of the locusts was like horses prepared for battle. On their heads were crowns of something like gold, and their faces were like the faces of men. They had hair like women’s hair, and their teeth were like lions’ teeth. And they had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the sound of their wings was like the sound of chariots with many horses running into battle. They had tails like scorpions, and there were stings in their tails. Their power was to hurt men five months.”

Some today try to say from Revelation 9’s description that these demons are really black helicopters. The props at the top — the blades — look like hair as it spins around. No, I don’t think we’re talking about helicopters here. It says these living creatures are in “the shape of the locusts.”

You would think that this invasion by the Demonic Scorpion Locusts is the climax of the Tribulation and that it couldn’t get worse. And yet, as we will read later in Revelation 9, it does indeed get very worse.

In the fifteenth segment of our series “The Mighty Angels of Revelation,” we’ll continue in Revelation 9 and meet Abaddon, King Over the Angels of the Bottomless Pit.

We agree that the Bottomless Pit that Satan will be cast into during the Millenial Kingdom as being the same pit where the Revelation demons are stored and the abyss that divides Hades is speculation, but it’s an educated speculation in that it fits the purpose for Hades – being a holding place until final judgment.

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Lamb & Lion Ministries was established for the purpose of proclaiming the soon return of Jesus. We do not believe it is possible to know the date when Jesus will return. But we do believe it is possible to know the season of the Lord's return, and it is our conviction that we are living in that season...